


An unexpected gift / breakfast in bed

by sshysmm



Series: 12 days of carnivale 2018 [4]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: 12 Days of Carnivale, Brotherly Love, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Family Dinners, Family Reunions, Fluff and Angst, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 22:25:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17170580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: “Well,” he grinned bravely for his big brother, this newly strange person made up of familiar patterns of speech and gestures jumbled up in uncomfortable ways. “I’ll ask Mrs Dean to get some venison in. Give you a taste of the old caribou meat. We’ll soon win you round to proper British cooking,” Robert turned to Silna and lifted his wine with an encouraging nod.---Robert gets his brother back and has to make some domestic adjustments.





	An unexpected gift / breakfast in bed

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I know nothing of the personality of Robert Goodsir. Too lazy to do the research this time, I just wanted to write in the same TV show universe I know and love, but this time with a bit of brotherly care and another perspective on Harry and Silna's relationship. 
> 
> I usually overthink Silna in Britain far too much to enjoy writing it (though I love reading other fics about it). If it's not your thing you may wanna skip this one though.  
> Content warning for people with food issues and those who might not themselves have perfect relationships with their families.

He had gone beyond the expectation of finding his brother. Robert was really just lingering, hoping for any scrap of evidence relating to the expedition as a whole, when into the settlement came a man and a woman drawing a sled between them. The man had pushed back his hood, revealing a full beard and a tangled halo of dark curls, and a smile that beamed brighter than the high Polar sun on fresh snow.  
Thinner, wilder, shorter a finger or two when he took his furry mittens off, Robert’s big brother grinned at him and opened his arms for an embrace. The woman who accompanied him remained a pace behind, her expression as solid and unreadable to Robert as the sea ice.  
Harry had reached for her hand and drawn her forwards, and introduced her as his wife. His eyes had sparkled with pride, with the excitement that in Robert’s memories was only ever applied to some new morsel of learning, but at Harry’s guidance the woman he called Silna had softened, smiling her trust at Harry and then Robert.  
She leaned close to Harry and spoke something that made him laugh, though Robert could not discern the end of one word nor the beginning of a second. “May I tell him so?” Harry had asked in English, and to Robert’s further astonishment Silna had nodded her assent.  
“She says that you do not resemble me. She thinks you must get a cold face here.”  
Robert had laughed, clapping his hand to his bare cheek, shaking his head in wonder at every aspect of this encounter. So much news to share! So many questions!  
He was to receive answers to precious few of them, however.  
He did know that Harry had only revealed himself because news of Robert’s search had finally reached him. He never said as much, he never openly raised the possibility of remaining in Nunavut, of returning to the remote existence he had adopted, but he only crossed the sea again for the sake of his little brother. If Robert had not looked for him, Harry would never have chosen to be found.  
And now he fretted in the family home, pacing his worries out as soon as he and Silna left the carriage that had brought the three of them there. On the journey, Robert had seen more of the changes wrought by whatever his brother had endured during his long years away and he marked the scars shared between Harry and his bride. Her speech slurred like that of the deaf girl who sold flowers outside the University, and one cheek was marked with the long, straight line of an old wound. Harry’s injuries seemed to go deeper though, leaving an occasional blankness in his eyes, a wandering, creeping panic that gripped him bodily, and at least once in the nights on board ship, Robert had heard the cries of violently disturbed sleep. Always at these times, Silna was there, and she knew what touch calmed his brother: she squeezed his hand in hers, caressed the skin of his cheek or forehead, brushing curls back so that she could plant a soft kiss here or there. It came as no surprise that his worry in the townhouse was all for her.  
“We must look into somewhere more remote, Robert. With the utmost speed,” Silna sat before the food she had barely touched, watching Harry move back and forth before the fireplace with a glum, anxious expression on her face. “The levels of illness in the city are un—they’re unacceptable. I’ve heard how it spreads around the trading posts...I’ve heard...I’ve seen...” he drew a shaky breath, pausing by the mantle piece.  
His voice was as soft as ever Robert remembered it, but the tones were clipped and precise, a sharper container for all the emotion he tried to keep within.  
“We will, Harry,” Robert told his brother in soothing tones. He hoped that if at least one of them sat in the proper place, enjoying the hot dinner and wine, the same peace might eventually catch on. He reflected that it was a good thing that their other siblings would not join them until later in the week, by which point Harry would surely have settled down somewhat.  
“We will look into it tomorrow morning, I promise it. I’ll have the papers ordered in from the islands, and, and anywhere you wish it. Just sit now. You look like you could use a decent meal, and all this restlessness is spoiling your wife’s appetite also.”  
Silna’s English was good enough to track his words, and she shook her head at Robert even as Harry responded instantly to the prompt, leaning on the mantlepiece to speak a phrase of Inuktitut to her.  
To this she smiled and repeated the negative gesture. Then, after a pause, she rattled off a much longer sentence, this one bringing a look of surprise to Harry’s face and then a gentle pink blush. He looked down with a self-deprecating laugh.  
“Yes. I wanted very much to make a good impression.”  
Silna said another thing and Harry laughed again and glanced at Robert with an apology in his smile, but he did now return to his chair, sitting and raising an eyebrow conspiratorially at her. “True. However, this is much better food. And —” he coughed awkwardly and switched to Inuktitut to finish what he had to say.  
Robert did not notice what effect the words had on Silna because Harry was already explaining, his cutlery back in hand as a gesture of willingness. “I’m sorry Robert. It was not quite our first meeting when I brought Silna a measure of rations on board ship. She was unimpressed with our cuisine then, and has had little opportunity to acclimatise since.”  
“Well,” he grinned bravely for his big brother, this newly strange person made up of familiar patterns of speech and gestures jumbled up in uncomfortable ways. “I’ll ask Mrs Dean to get some venison in. Give you a taste of the old caribou meat. We’ll soon win you round to proper British cooking,” Robert turned to Silna and lifted his wine with an encouraging nod.  
The rest of the meal passed without anyone leaving the table, and Robert even managed to learn the rudimentary pronunciation of the Inuktitut word for caribou. If precious little food on the other two plates was consumed and no wine drunk by any but Robert, well, at least it felt good to have company in the house. At least he had done as their father had asked, and brought Harry home.

* * *

  
“Excuse me, Mr Goodsir, it is the venison tonight, is it not?”  
Robert glanced up from the assortment of papers on his desk. “Yes?”  
The cook gave a little nod, her hands wrung together in the towel at the front of her apron. “Very well, sir. It’s just, well, the other Mr Goodsir was asking after a fishmonger. I thought perhaps plans had changed and he meant me to go, but he said he wanted directions. He was out at the crack of dawn!”  
Robert peeled off his spectacles and his dumbfounded expression gave her confidence.  
“I don’t mean to gossip, sir. I just need to know what it is that’s wanted. It’ll take a bit of getting used to, this having two masters of the house.”  
A sound at the rear of the building saved Robert from the pettish response that teetered on the edge of his tongue: a latch clicking and a door shutting, followed by the tap of footsteps on stone flags. “Thank you, Mrs Dean. My brother is used to a rather different way of life, and it will take him a little time to readjust. Best tell me if you see anything else unusual though.”  
Robert pursued the sound of his brother’s footsteps, thinking momentarily how glad he was that Harry had changed out of the soft padding boots he had been wearing when they had reunited. Ahead of him, oblivious to his follower, Harry ran lightly up the stairs, a paper-wrapped parcel under one arm, a jacket made for a fuller-figured, younger man flapping as he moved.  
With a smooth gesture, Harry opened the door of the dressing room appended to his chamber and slipped inside. Robert, too caught up with curiosity and a rising, unexplored sense of alarm, followed with little thought as to the privacy of the room: in that moment he was a small boy again, following one of his idols into an inner sanctum, hoping to sit by his feet while he did his schoolwork or jotted notes on some observation he’d just made in the park.  
Through the dressing room, Harry did not pause. Neither shoes nor jacket came off and he was through into the bedroom, silent and soft as a spirit. Robert brought himself up short with a start, just the other side of the door that remained ajar.  
There was a rustling of bedclothes and Silna’s voice murmured what he took to be a greeting.  
Robert contained a panicked hiss, turning to leave the dressing room. As he moved his head his gaze passed over the gap between the door and its frame and he saw the tableau in the room. Silna sat up, regal in her surroundings of quilts and throws, her dark her loose and long over her shoulders and the bedding. To her side, perched on the edge of the bed, Harry sat with one leg crooked up on the covers, the paper package he had retrieved lying on the thigh of his woollen trousers.  
He spoke to her in Inuktitut, the sound of his gentle voice pronouncing these strange sounds still a bafflement to Robert. Her smile was a thing of wonder that kept him standing transfixed for the moment though: it was a difficult thing, to understand the gratitude raised in his own heart on seeing someone smile so tenderly at his big brother. Robert swallowed, asking himself how he could feel so glad and yet so suddenly lonely in a house more full of love than it had been in years.  
Inside the room, Silna heard Harry out and then took what she was passed from the paper wrapping, placing a morsel into her mouth and chewing thoughtfully. The rich, oily smell of salmon reached Robert’s nose, soon followed by the joyous sparkle of Silna’s laughter. Harry laughed too, and had the presence of mind to unlace and kick off his shoes before clambering onto the bed beside her. He shuffled against the headboard, still wrapped in jacket and scarf, and Silna edged towards his shoulder, reaching for another piece of the breakfast he had brought.  
Robert had moved himself away from the door before he heard their voices drop into the reverential, hushed tones of affection. There was a crackle of paper crumpling, a creak of the wooden bedframe as bodyweight adjusted on it, and Robert was already fleeing for the corridor, softly, silently shutting the dressing room door though Harry had left it open in his hurry to return to his wife.  
He went back to his papers and made furious notes on every suitable property. He called Mrs Dean to him with new instructions for the household provisions through the week, and he composed and recomposed the words he wanted to speak.  
When Harry and Silna finally descended the stairs it was not as late as it felt to Robert, who had been restless at his desk since barely half past seven. He arrested his brother as the pair of them moved cautiously into the parlour and smiled kindly at Silna, but still felt he could only say what he needed to say to Harry alone.  
“May I borrow you, just for a moment, Harry?”  
Robert gestured for Silna to go ahead into the parlour, where her curious gaze already roved over bookshelves and the large, crackling fire that he had had lit. “Please. Mrs Dean can bring you some tea — if, if you drink tea — and I shall be through in a very short moment. I just need to share a word with Harry.”  
He addressed his words directly to Silna, who studied him closely as he spoke. Robert believed it was this that persuaded Harry to allow his brother a moment’s speech alone, for she mimed drinking and said “tea?” back to him.  
“You did not like the tea on ship,” Harry responded doubtfully. “Ask Mrs Dean if she has peppermint.”  
Silna pulled a face that apparently needed no translation, because Harry gave her arm a squeeze. “Yes you can. Pep-per-mint. You will like that, I am sure.”  
She gestured back to him with a questioning look, and again Harry knew just what was meant: “very well. A pot of each, I am sure Robert will prefer coffee, but...”  
“I will take tea,” Robert smiled, reaching into the room for a long-stemmed bell standing on a nearby table. He rang it, assured Silna that the housekeeper would be there in a moment, and escorted Harry back to his study.  
Robert shut the door on his brother’s backwards glance. “Harry, she will be fine. Her English is really quite good, is it not?”  
He folded his arms uneasily, glancing about Robert’s books and notes with a restless eye. “Yes, yes,” was the distracted answer.  
“I just wanted to say, Harry,” Robert began, hoping to catch his glance though he now frowned severely at something on the table. With a sigh, Robert handed his spectacles across and Harry did not look up as he took them, edging them up and down his nose as he sought the right focus to read one of the ads Robert had been looking at.  
“I wanted to say that you must tell me if you require anything. If anything could be done better for you or for your wife. I will never ask for a reason. I will not demand that you tell me why. I know that you have learned to live in self-sufficiency, but that does not always need to be the way.”  
The expression that regarded him reminded Robert a little of their father, not unkind but a little severe in its expectation from behind beard and spectacles. “Of course. Thank you.”  
“So will you assist me in creating a list for Mrs Dean?” Robert pressed on. “And, and Silna, if she wishes, should help. I was just recalling how miserable I found the food when I first stayed with those tribes of the North: I was sick to death of frozen meat and smoked this and fermented that. But she must now feel as I did, and if you can tell me what we might arrange to make the change easier for her, and for yourself, then I will be only too happy to see it done.”  
For a moment, Robert thought Harry had slipped into one of those strange, distant blanks he had. His eyes lost their focus and drifted elsewhere, his hand holding the spectacles now trembled a little and he brought it close to his body to still it. Robert tried not to let his own expression linger on the shiny nubs of skin that ended a couple of the fingers early, the nervous way his thumb worried at the wire frame. He was just wondering whether to reach out to him or to call for Silna when Harry shook his head and removed himself to Robert’s desk chair, rubbing his face fretfully with one hand.  
He changed to nodding his head and tugged a little at his beard, and Robert felt his skin go cold to see the sheen of tears covering his eyes as Harry stared out at the early morning sun.  
“Thank you, Robert,” was all he murmured for a little while. “Thank you.”  
It took a few gasping false starts before he managed to continue, but then spoke to the spectacles that he twirled in his hands, and Robert listened, silent and rapt. He was certain that only part of the story was shared with him, and then that much of that was smoothed and sanitised for his sake, but he heard more then than he had ever thought he would learn of the expedition.  
Long, long winter that ended with the knowledge they had been subsisting on poison for two years; madness and despair on the ice; a secret he had not wanted to keep. Many of the gaps Robert could fill in without trouble: his big brother was a rock on whom he had loved to lean as a child, on whom he could all too easily imagine others unloading the burdens of their minds. It was not that Harry had learned to be self-sufficient when he disappeared into the wilderness with Silna, no. When all had demanded his care and worry for problems he could never hope to solve, Silna offered her own strength in return. She saw him struggle under the burden of others’ miseries and she was the only one to offer support. Now Harry had long forgotten how it was to let anyone but her offer him their care, until Robert had made his offer.  
Robert let him speak and said none of this, only moving close to give his shoulder a squeeze when the words dried up, the story left fractured and broken somewhere on the bare stones of King William Island, and Robert would not ask Harry to continue.  
They returned to the other room together to find Silna pacing the room’s edges, her fingers dancing lightly across the surface of oil paintings hung there. Two pots of tea waited on the table by the fire, and though she still wore her furs, combined with a pair of beaded, gaudy house shoes, she gave off the perfect assurance of a hostess welcoming guests into her parlour.  
In a second, though, she had missed nothing about Harry’s demeanour. She saw instantly the way in which emotion left him rattled and slightly drained and she flew to his side and brought him to a fireside chair, glancing at Robert with a look of plain assessment. Robert pretended not to notice and began to pour out the tea while Harry summoned a smile for Silna and stroked her cheek and hair as she crouched before his chair.  
“It is alright, love,” he said softly. “It is alright. I am fine. Robert is going to help us find a house. He is going to find us somewhere by the sea, where you can hunt with your bow and I can write again, and until then he will see that we are as well looked after here as can be.”  
She demanded something in Inuktitut, but Harry’s answering smile was so sweet and so swift in coming that she did not need to hear his answer fully before turning to Robert anew. Her dark eyes glittering as she appraised him, Silna nodded. “Thank you,” she told him, the words formed carefully as she tried to corral their slippery sounds with her damaged tongue.  
Robert’s chest swelled with joy, but he looked down with a demure smile, concentrating on the tea.  
Silna rose to her feet and steeled herself. “Said that you would. Did not believe it,” Robert met her eyes with surprise when he saw that she gestured to Harry, not herself, at the latter. “My family is gone. You are important. Family always helps family.”  
“Oh, of course,” he stammered, both he and his brother looking up at the woman standing between them, each with an awe of his own. “And your family is here now,” Robert added belatedly.  
Silna smiled.

 


End file.
